Business/Technology Reporter
Colorado seems to be a buzz with labor union activity. JBS meatpackers in Greeley are primed to walk if a bargaining session Friday goes sour. Denver Art Museum employees rallied last week because two years after unionizing, they have no contract. Meanwhile, table staff and bartenders at the iconic Casa Bonita restaurant have a fresh new union.
Still, 2025 was rough for local labor organizers. It began with President Donald Trump ending collective bargaining rights for workers at many federal agencies over security concerns. In May, Gov. Jared Polis vetoed a union-supported bill to end a state policy requiring workers to vote a second time to start a union. And by the year’s end, petitions to unionize in Colorado fell to 34, down 40% from the prior year when the post-pandemic peak averaged more than one new filing a week.
All that stress appears to have taken a toll on union membership, according to new data out Wednesday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the U.S., union membership was flat in 2025 from the prior year. In Colorado, it was down 22%, the biggest drop nationwide. The state was also in the bottom third for union density, or the percent of workers represented by a union compared to the overall workforce.
BLS economist Reid Kelley didn’t seem too concerned. The data comes from the Current Population Survey, he said, and it’s a small sample. Plus, October data wasn’t collected due to the federal government shutdown. Kelley recommended viewing Colorado data over several years, which showed that after an 18% gain in 2018, union members dropped 15.7% in 2019, then 23.2% in 2020. Between 2022 and 2024, membership increased in the state.
“The net result of this is that we would not make all that much of the Colorado 2024-2025 change,” Kelley said in an email. “You can see how Colorado’s union membership estimates have changed from year to year; the table shows, in percentage terms, how much the estimate of union members has changed year-to-year. Looking at this, the 2024-2025 over-the-year change is on the larger side but not out of the norm of its year-to-year fluctuations.”
Dennis Dougherty, executive director of the Colorado AFL-CIO, said he, too, tends to be wary of the BLS data, even in years when the state grew. He said he checked with several private sector unions around the state and found no one was reporting a big drop in membership. And to his knowledge, there weren’t any private sector unions shutting down, or decertifying.
“Based on everyone I talked to, there wasn’t a dip in teachers unions. We’ve actually made gains in public sector unions and municipalities and counties. There hasn’t been a dip in firefighters or police,” he said. “The largest dip probably came from the federal workforce.”
Before the October federal shutdown, Colorado employed about 54,300 federal workers, excluding the military, according to the state labor department. That number had dropped by 2,700 since January 2025, when the Trump administration introduced efforts to cut down on the size and cost of the federal government.
The annual BLS report is still an important data point, Dougherty said. It impacts the state’s “union density” rate, or the number of workers represented by unions compared with the overall workforce. Colorado’s rate dropped to 6.7% in 2025, from 7.7% a year earlier. The rate had peaked in 2018 at 12%. The U.S. rate is currently 11.2%.
“When you have a state with a 6.7% union density and you are wondering why there’s an affordability crisis in the state, this is a very important data point,” Dougherty said.
He pointed to a Colorado Fiscal Institute report that workers covered by a union average 10.2% more in wages. That higher wage also brings up wages for nonunion private-sector workers by $2,300, based on 2023 data.
“This is real money that workers don’t have in the state (compared) to other areas with a higher union density,” he said.
➔ U.S. had 30 “major work stoppages” in 2025. That’s above the nation’s average of 17.8 a year since 2006, according to BLS data, out Friday. In Colorado, that seems like it would include a three-week strike by Safeway workers that ended July 5, and the Telluride ski patrollers strike that shut down the ski resort in late December. But the BLS only tracks major “work stoppages” involving more than 1,000 workers. Here’s the BLS list of walkouts since 1993.
➔ ICYMI: Colorado Democrats, labor movement revive push to ease unionization rules. Gov. Jared Polis is promising another veto. >> Read story
Sun economy stories you may have missed
➔ San Luis Valley case challenging buffer zone around billionaire landowner’s new house wraps up in Costilla County. The decision is up to a special master after a three-day hearing over the access rights of heirs to the Sangre de Cristo Land Grant of 1844. >> Read story
➔ As US Supreme Court rules against Trump’s tariffs, Colorado companies look at implications. Colorado small businesses scrambled last spring to adjust orders, reroute manufacturing and find cash to pay the higher tariffs. >> Read story
➔ Food banks in Colorado mountain towns are struggling to keep residents fed amid low snow year. Record traffic from underworked, overstressed residents pushes food banks to the brink. “Really hoping that our communities survive this.” >> Read story
➔ Heat pump installations in Colorado more than doubled in 2025 as rebates expired and contractors mastered service. Xcel Energy and Tri-State primed the heat pump boom, training hundreds of private installers to help encourage the shift to clean heating and cooling. >> Read story
➔ Federal proposal limiting foreign scientists at Boulder lab disrupts Colorado’s quantum industry. A proposed update to a federal security policy on government-funded research could shut out non-US associates at NIST, the federal lab, after March 31. >> Read story
➔ Palantir departs Denver, moves headquarters to Miami. Valued at $300B, Palantir was the largest publicly traded company in Colorado. CEO Alex Karp recently bought a monastery in Old Snowmass. >> Read story
Other working bits
➔ Colorado has 12th highest median salary in help-wanted ads. And it comes out to $65,000, according to an analysis by Aspen Technology Labs and the Colorado Chamber Foundation. Aspen, which tracks job postings and how much they pay, said the pay rate ranked the state 12th in the nation for highest median salaries last year, up from 14th in 2024.
The number of open jobs, however, saw a 5.8% drop in postings in the fourth quarter, which was higher than the U.S. decline of 4.4%. The notable exception of the weak job market was in the aerospace and defense industries, where “hiring demand increased meaningfully,” said Michael Woodrow, Aspen’s president, in a statement. Job postings for the sector increased 47% in 2025 from 2024, while median salary came in at just under $125,000, according to Aspen data. >> View report
➔ Zillow predicts apartment rents will rise just 0.6% this year. The average asking rent in Denver was $1,838 a month in January, and lower than the national average of $1,895, according to Zillow’s Observed Rent Index. That comes out to a typical renter paying 26.4% of their income on rent, the lowest since August 2021.
With Denver rents falling 0.1% in January from December, the metro area was also called out in Zillow’s report as being one of the “most affordable metro areas for rents,” with Denverites spending about 19.4% of their income on rent.
The Denver metro area has seen a number of new apartment buildings hit the market in the past few years, which has benefited locals who don’t mind moving for discounted rents and better deals. With that continuing in 2026 in Denver and some areas nationwide, Zillow projects that multifamily rents will be flat this year, growing just 0.6%. >> See report
➔ 60 ex-PetSmart workers getting checks from Colorado. PetSmart settled a lawsuit filed on July 29, 2025, by the Colorado attorney general alleging the pet retailer offered free training to dog groomers but then required employees to repay some training costs if they left the company within two years. That’s called a training repayment agreement provision, or TRAP, which is regulated by the state’s consumer protection act. According to the settlement, PetSmart will pay $225,000 to the state, which will be split among more than 60 former PetSmart employees in amounts of $5,500, $5,000 or $2,100. >> Details
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Thanks for sticking with me for this week’s report. ~ tamara
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